Love in Action

Report from the United Kingdom

Master's Universal Love
Extends to the Band Aid Charitable Trust

By the London News Group (Originally in English)

Band Aid was a "supergroup" formed in response to the devastating Ethiopian famine of 1984. The band of about forty well known British and Irish pop music stars was organized by Bob Geldof, lead singer of the Irish band Boomtown Rats and Scottish rock musician Midge Ure to record the original single Do They Know It's Christmas? in November 1984. The Band Aid Charitable Trust was subsequently established in April 1985 to manage the revenue from sales of the record to relieve food shortages and poverty in Ethiopia and the surrounding areas of Africa.

Since this time, the Trust has also handled money raised through other charitable projects (e.g., Fashion Aid, Sport Aid, School Aid and Band Aid II) in continuing efforts to relieve hunger and poverty in Africa. To date, about half of the fund has been used to provide emergency relief, largely in Ethiopia and Sudan, where the threat of famine has continued to haunt millions each year. The other half has been supporting over 300 long term development and rehabilitation programs in Ethiopia, Sudan, Uganda, Chad, Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso and other countries seriously affected by the famine of the mid 1980s. Thus Band Aid has not only saved many African lives, but also transformed those involved and most importantly touched people all around the world.

Receipt from the Band Aid Charitable Trust

As Master says, "Disasters and adversity are not of God's creation but of humankind's own making." For example, the African famine of the ‘80s was a bitter result of greed and selfishness during that period; specifically, the Western World's exploitation of Third World countries and humanity's abuse of nature. Yet, it was exactly this dire result that finally awakened the international community to the origins of such problems. Band Aid was born of the time as an instrument to rock the world, to serve as a wake-up call.

In March 2005, upon learning of the Band Aid Charitable Trust's work, Supreme Master Ching Hai contributed US$100,000 to support the fund in Her usual spontaneous fashion. Like many of Her other actions, this unpremeditated offering to those most inneed showed the unconditional and free nature of Master's Love; that is, how She always "gives without giving."

For more information about the Band Aid Charitable Trust please visit:

http://www.charitycommission.gov.uk/
registeredcharities/showcharity.asp?remchar=&chyno=292199